


Child Of Light

by choicescarfsylveon



Category: Glee
Genre: 1990s, Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, M/M, San Francisco, Speculative fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 15:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13930047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choicescarfsylveon/pseuds/choicescarfsylveon
Summary: This is not the first time that Kurt has caused strange, unimaginable things to come to pass through their door.





	Child Of Light

**Author's Note:**

> This is an idea I had about 90s era Kurt and Sebastian; I've been doing a lot of reading about the history of gay lovers during Don't Ask, Don't Tell days, and also been re-reading my favorite collection of queer horror and speculative stories where the impossible seems to happen.
> 
> This is my imagination's combination of all those things xx

It’s a rainy night in the San Francisco bay. Sebastian and Kurt are cuddled under Sebastian’s electric blanket on their flea market couch, Kurt absently stirring his tea and Sebastian absently tracing patterns along the base of Kurt’s hairline, as they watch the nightly news.

 

“ _There has been a steep decline in adoption for children older than six in the East Bay,”_ the reporter is saying, as video clips of children of color playing in day care centers flickers on the screen, _“Last year, in the year 2000, fixty six percent of adopting couples in Oakland wanted a child who was under the age of two. These older kids feel the sting of abandonment. They are often left in foster care their whole lives.”_

 

“That’s awful,” Kurt mumbles, and Sebastian doesn't answer, but Kurt knows he’s listening. “Look at them all. If we had a house big enough, I’d take them all.” Kurt doesn’t exactly know how much he means that, but looking at their faces—large, wondering eyes, the way they look directly into the camera, searching for someone within it—makes him wonder how each of them got to that point. How the parent who bore them could look them in the eyes and decide they didn’t want them.

 

Though, he imagines that circumstances are nuanced, that perhaps, some parents didn’t have a choice but to let them go.

 

“You’d take in every stray in the world, if you could,” says Sebastian. He means it as the highest compliment that he can give.

 

The sound of the rain, which is a backdrop to the program, is comforting to Kurt, who grew up in Indio, California, where there was hardly ever rain and only dry, desert hot or cold. He hates to be outside in rain, though, is glad that the work day of dodging in and out of buildings under his umbrella has finally come to an end. He's glad that he is here now, with his husband, cold feet inside warm socks.

 

Sebastian has always loved rain, grew up in Seattle where it was a natural constant, would like to be outside in it now, feel it drenching his clothes and skin; would like to be kissing Kurt in it, feeling his husband’s body shiver against his own. But he knows how much Kurt hates to be wet and cold. The sound is soothing to Sebastian regardless, whether he’s in it or just imagining its fall outside in the darkness.

 

Through the pattering of the rain against the windows, and upon the roof of their small house, Sebastian picks out something else within the sounds: the sound of a voice crying. He nudges Kurt for a moment, and Kurt shifts easily, not taking his eyes off the television or stopping the stir of his tea as Sebastian stands up.

 

Sebastian moves to the door, presses the shell of his ear as close to it as he can without touching it.

 

“What is it?” Kurt says, though he still hasn’t looked at his lover.

 

Sebastian can feel the cold radiating through the wood of the door.

 

He can also hear now, for certain, that someone is outside shedding tears. Someone young. A child.

 

“Kurt,” Sebastian says. His pulse jumps rapidly as he hastens to unlock the door, the knob painfully freezing in his hands. There on their doorstep stands a girl of about three or four, sobbing hard, her skin dark, her black hair a wet tangle about her face.

 

“Kurt.”

 

The young girl wears a purple dress, soaked to her skin. Kurt comes to the door still wrapped in the electric blanket, and when sees the child, he gasps.

 

“Oh, sweetie.” The girl sobs, shaking her head, backing away slowly from the doorstep. “Please don’t go,” Kurt tries again. “It’s okay.”

 

“How do you do this?" Sebastian watches Kurt move outside, stepping into the pool of water on the porch with his socks, as a shock of cold draft sweeps past them, through the house. The chill seems a magic aura, surrounding Kurt as he kneels down in front of the child, who is hiccuping, who looks scared. But not for much longer.

 

“How do you do this?” Sebastian says again, watching Kurt hold the child close, whisper, “You’re alright, you’re alright now.” This is not the first time that Kurt has caused strange, unimaginable things to come to pass through their door.

 

“How do you do this?”

 

Kurt’s gained the child’s trust enough to pick her up, hoist her over his shoulder, and bring her within. Sebastian closes the door behind them, watching Kurt swaddle the girl in the blanket. Kurt looks to him, solemn, his eyes wet.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first time it happened, it was 1999, and Kurt and Sebastian had just graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively. They had just moved in to the rickety, crooked, Victorian Queen Anne home that they would rest in in San Francisco for about a year. Kurt was wearing one of Sebastian’s old Berkeley sweatshirts—it always happened when Kurt was touching a fabric of Sebastian’s that he loved—when their front door, which they kept open in the afternoon for the light, was passed through by a friendly intruder.

 

“Hello, hello!” A man of about twenty walked through the door—white, brunette, wearing a blue crewneck that had HARVEY MILK IS ALIVE printed on it in white, and a backpack with dozens of AIDS rights pins attached to the straps. “I was told I might find you here.”

 

Sebastian came to the door first, looked at the stranger with alarm in his eyes.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, "who are you?”

 

Kurt came to the door second, not looking nearly as shocked as his lover.

 

“Oh,” said the young intruder. “I’m sorry. This house used to belong to someone else.”

 

Sebastian looked back at Kurt, who was holding a spatula midair, still wearing his pink apron sloshed with bits of egg and pancake batter.

 

“Harvey Milk was shot in the head,” Kurt said, casual, to the stranger. “Don’t you think?”

 

Cue Kurt inviting the stranger in for brunch, feeding him flapjacks one-by-one at the kitchen table. Sebastian was sitting in the living room on their paisley Goodwill couch, trying to pay attention to the black and white documentary about Desert Storm, but sometimes turning to watch his calm, lovely husband, concerned. Kurt seemed to know this person who just walked through, though Sebastian knew there was no way he actually did. The kid was harmless, he had a band-aid on his cheek and his cap was turned back and his legs bounced under the table like he was a toddler who couldn’t wait for his treat. But still, something about him gave Sebastian pause.

 

It seemed like the young man was urgent to finally say this to Kurt:

 

“It was all an illusion,” the boy said, as Kurt stood at the stove turning cakes. “It was staged. You can make someone look like they’re dead when they aren’t, you know. Haven’t you ever heard of Hollywood? It’s convenient for the government to make us think he’s gone.”

 

“That’s interesting,” Kurt said.

 

Kurt left the stranger alone in the kitchen for a moment, after having made a stack of at least thirty pancakes, too high, and came to stand behind the couch where Sebastian sat.

 

“Come eat?” Kurt said. Sebastian looked back at him and reached for his hands at the same time Kurt extended them towards him. Sebastian held onto them, feeling the cold of the silver band that he gave Kurt during their “wedding,” which was less legal ceremony than it was them deciding on a hilltop, one day, that they were husbands.

 

He looked past Kurt at the young man at the table.

 

“I’m alright.” Sebastian rubbed Kurt’s hand, firm. “Who is he?”

 

Kurt shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, his gaze beyond Sebastian, to someone marching on the television screen. "But it's okay."

 

Weeks later—the young man from before simply ate his pancakes, stayed and talked to Kurt for twenty minutes about the state of gay activism in the U.S., and then left, saying “Goodbye, goodbye!” cheerfully, knocking on the open door three times as he exited—weeks later, Sebastian and Kurt were still in the Queen Anne. Which had floorboards that were creaky, paint that was chipping, and an ancient heating system that hardly worked. Sebastian was watching the nightly news, which was telling a feature story about veterans adjusting back to civilian life.

 

He recognized the young man’s face in the film. “Kurt,” he called, feeling a chill wash over him as the boy spoke on camera, shaken up, about an IED attack he once survived.

 

“Kurt.”

 

Kurt came presently, wrapped in a red quilt that Sebastian’s mother gave them as a “wedding” gift, standing behind the couch, where Sebastian sat.

 

“It’s cold,” Kurt commented. His eyes scanned the screen, looking into a familiar face.

 

“That’s that guy,” Sebastian said.

 

The documentary went on to say that the young man had killed himself in 1998, a few months after being profiled for the interview.

 

“Kurt.” Sebastian turned around to look at him. Kurt still stared at the screen.

 

“Oh,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the present, at their house in the rain, Kurt has placed the young girl on the couch. He’s listening to her broken toddler-lish, nodding attentively through her hiccups and lingering sobs, wrapping her tighter in the blanket, over and over. Sebastian watches while on the landline with the police, half-listening to the officer give him instructions about what to do, half-yearning to know what power his husband has.

 

“Can you remember where you before this?” Kurt says.

 

“I can’ find my mommy," the child says. Kurt strokes the sides of her face, twists a curl of her hair. “I been ou'side lon' time. I try to fin’ her."

 

"When was the last time you saw her?"

 

"I don' know. She say come home if I e’er lost. I try to fin’ house.”

 

“Where do you live?” Kurt says. “Did Mommy tell you your address?”

 

“3, 2, 3, 3. Mar—ket.”

 

“Market street. In West Oakland.”

 

“But God say, I come here.”

 

“God?”

 

Sebastian has stopped listening to the officer on the line. Watching Kurt close.

 

“I sorry.” The little girls shakes. “I jus’ try fin’ my mom. I ge’ lost, I walk al’way here.”

 

“It’s alright.” Kurt holds her again, frowning, closing his eyes tight, shaking his head. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”

 

“ _Bring the child to the precinct,”_ the officer says in Sebastian’s ear. _“We’ll take care of her.”_

 

Sebastian goes upstairs before mentally preparing to start the car and drive downtown, skittishly ruffling through the box of things of his that Kurt’s once worn, things he can’t look at the same now. The things that, while Kurt wore them, caused things that had once disappeared from the world to gravitate towards them. He takes out the Berkeley sweatshirt, a pair of gloves, the red quilt. When he touches each, he feels breathless, and waves of emotion wash over him.

 

At first he’d thought it was the house; the Queen Anne, the 1800s structure that maybe had history, had one too many families that had once passed through it. But here they are in this new house, and still, it follows Kurt here.

 

When Sebastian comes back downstairs, Kurt and the girl are cuddled on the couch. Sebastian wonders how, how he got her so calm, stopped the tears and the hyperventilation, in just the seconds he left them alone.

 

Kurt looks at Sebastian on the staircase, motions for him to stay quiet. The girl is not asleep, but close to it. She blinks her eyes, staring blankly at the television. On it, a group of girls in black and white spin in a circle. The narrator of the film says a foster home on Market street was burned down accidentally by its mother in 1996.

 

Kurt’s talking to the girl, his voice low, so low that Sebastian can hear it’s tone, but not what Kurt is saying. Whatever it is, it’s a story. Kurt has this way about him when he’s telling a story, a mythos, of which his astute memory has collected thousands.

 

The way Kurt’s body curves around the child makes Sebastian ache, makes him wish he could give Kurt more than he actually can. It makes him imagine Kurt as a father, a good, careful, nurturing one. The wisest. Sebastian heart aches to give Kurt children of his own, though science would disagree. But Kurt would, Sebastian knows he would, takes this strange, lost girl as his own if he could.

 

He already has, in his way, even if it's only for this moment.

 

As Sebastian descends the staircase, Kurt takes to gently retying the purple ribbons in the girl's hair. He fastens them into bows as she closes her eyes, begins to snore.

 

“Kurt.” Sebastian doesn’t want to end this moment, but he has to.

 

Kurt nods, wrapping the child in the blanket, lifting her again.

 

“I don’t know,” Kurt says to him. “I can’t explain this. I don't know.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“They say when I was born,” Kurt said, on one of Sebastian’s first dates with him in a pub, 1995, when they were both broke college students, “I was so translucent, you could see through my skin to all my organs. It’s a tale my mother told. My adoptive parents once got in touch with her, on the phone. It was the only thing she told them and the only time they were ever able to find anyone I’m related to. She called them. Anyway, apparently my translucence was a condition of some kind, but my adoptive dad used to have a theory that I’m a nymph. A light nymph.”

 

Kurt said this factually, with such certainty and temperament, that Sebastian actually sort of believed him for a moment. Even though a “light nymph” wasn’t a real thing. Was it?

 

There was certainly something about him, though, this boy. Sebastian had walked into that college bar three weeks ago and been stunned by the way that he looked. He hadn’t been able to leave until they spoke.

 

“You said ‘used to,’” Sebastian said. “Has his theory changed?”

 

“Probably not. He passed over. He and my adoptive mother both, when I was fourteen.”

 

“God. I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s alright. It happens. But I’ve been on my own ever since.”

 

“You won’t be. Not anymore.”

 

Even then, Sebastian knew.

 

Kurt took Sebastian’s hands. “Okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Was she real?”

 

In the lobby of the police station, Sebastian holds Kurt’s hands—Kurt’s grip is tight, strong and warm as Sebastian’s hands tremble—as they wait for the appropriate channel to take the violet child into custody. They are waiting to find out what will be done, how she will transferred to social services, and to give the police a statement.

 

“Hm?” says Kurt. “What’s that, baby?”

 

“Was she real?”

 

Kurt notices his lover is shaking.

 

“She was.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Twin peaks were shrouded in light. At the top of Eureka, the thick gray cloud cover rolled away and the sky re-emerged, with rainbows misting throughout, a beam of light showering down upon the hilltop. Sebastian and Kurt stood there, the cool breeze wisping through the grass, its leaves tickling Kurt and Sebastian’s ankles, which were bare.

 

“Do you take me,” Sebastian was saying, grinning goofily, “Sebastian Smythe, former headache and evil nightmare transformed into a decent human by one Kurt Hummel, to be your unlawfully wedded husband?”

 

Kurt chuckled, squeezing Sebastian’s hands in his own. “I do.

 

“Do you take me, Kurt Hummel, once an orphan with an active imagination and reckless abandon, who's found a home in Sebastian Smythe, to be your unlawfully wedded husband?”

 

“Um, hell yes.”

 

“We should kiss, then.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Sebastian has never felt, and will never feel again, anything like that moment and that kiss, full of love, that defined their unity. He was so filled with elation, and trust, and light, that he thought he could transcend life itself because of it. He felt he had reached the pinnacle of joy, that there was nothing that would ever compare.

 

He looked down at Kurt’s face after their kiss and found that Kurt’s skin was glittering, actually glittering. Sebastian blinked several times. The illusion still didn’t pass over.

 

“What?” Kurt said, at Sebastian's long stare.

 

“You’re glowing.”

 

Kurt looked down and around at himself. “Oh.”

 

Sebastian laughed, tears brimming his eyes. “Are you real?”

 

Kurt snorted, titled his head. “Of course I am.”

 

Sebastian was overcome once more, picking Kurt up into a tight hug and spinning him around.

 

“I don’t know,” Sebastian said as he pressed his lover’s feet back onto the earth, “if I’ve imagined you or if heaven’s really allowed me to be so lucky.”

 

Kurt winked. "You're lucky."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"They say that when you die," Kurt said on the night of their honeymoon, which they spent on a simple rowboat in the shallow of bay, the stars alight above their heads, "you see a flash of light."

 

Sebastian pondered Kurt as he sipped his glass of champagne. "Why are you saying that?"

 

Kurt shrugged, smiling light. "I just wonder if I'm going to see a flash before I die. Getting married, you know, it makes me think about time. We said to each other today, 'until death do us part.' Don't you wonder what death will be like?"

 

"Sometimes."

 

Sebastian wanted to hold Kurt, so he did. "Come here." Kurt sat between Sebastian's legs, leaning his body against his lover's. Sebastian encompassed him, kissing the side of his face, as a cold swell of wind swirled around them.

 

"All I know is," Sebastian said, "that I'll be here. Until you die, after that. And I'll always be loving you."


End file.
